We fully agree there is room for improvement (we are actually on it!).

As you may know, when we started years ago (back in the TradeSlide times), the purpose was only to assist traders improve their trading. Hence the scores, the levels, etc. In a sense, the roadmap was useful for traders who were looking to improve.

Things have changed a lot since then and we are the first ones to recognise that the levels need to get reviewed. As a matter of fact, our efforts are focused on launching a "level-free" marketplace where both traders & investors are free to grant whatever weight they like to each of the attributes / stats. We analyse the strategies and make all the data available for investors / traders to make their own decisions.

Finding a way to rate the precision of a trendfollowing momentum entry is far from being easy.The wrong thing is stating:"timing works perfectly".There are more than 60 darwin with performance higher than 7 and timing lower than 4.In this way Darwinex is creating a bias for mean reverting strategies.

Let me put it this way: the timing attribute is correct, I do understand, however, that you may think that timing is not so relevant in certain types of strategies. The problem is not the Timing attribute but the weight granted to the Timing score in the levels!

@ignacioEven if you go level-free a low score remain penalyzing for momentum traders.It is several months that I complain about timing, and we will have to wait for months for a level-free Darwinia.It would be a more elegant solution to solve timing problems.

Hi, I have two strategies one of which has just met the minimum threshold to be listed as a Darwin and so I have had my first look at the scores for my Investable Attributes. Five of them scored higher than 9 which encourages me greatly - one Loss Aversion demonstrates very clearly that I am coming out of profitable trades too quickly and I can take steps to improve.

However one 'Open Strategy' scored my strategy 0.52 out of 10 and I think the scoring is flawed.

If you look at NTI who is listed top of Hall of Fame his(or her?) Open Strategy score is 9.45. This comes from comparing actual entry against 11 random strategies entering before or after the actual strategy - his percentile score is 94.86 rounded to a score of 9.45. NTI clearly does not enter the market in a random manner.

My comparison against 11 random strategies produces the exact opposite - my strategy scores lower than all eleven - my percentile score is 5.23% rounded to a score of 0.52. I do not enter the market randomly, I enter based on the close of a 4 hour bar - every trade exactly the same which is why I beat the 11 random strategies but on what Darwinex views as the negative side.

It was one of the hardest lessons I have learnt in trading to not enter a trade until you have confirmation - by consistently entering the market based on a 4 hour signal it would appear that it is impossible for me to improve my score on this attribute.

I think the attribute is supportive of scalpers but is actively discouraging to swing traders.

Should the attribute not simply measure the consistency of entry and be neutral on whether you should go in earlier or later - should it not be the divergence from random (emotional) entries that should be scored?

I think I should be scored almost identically to NTI - he has a percentile score of 94.86% and I have the mirror opposite 5.23% - he is 44.86% above neutral and I am 44.77% below neutral and I think I should have the same score for Open Strategy.

I have seen similar low scores in other Darwins who have larger average pips indicating they are swing traders rather than scalpers

Some other Investable Attributes measure evidence that there is a pattern underlying decisions i,e, there is a strategy - this Open Strategy identifies there is a strategy but then decides that one type of strategy is good and another is bad - I happen to believe my 4 hour entry is a good strategy but this Investable Attribute gives it a very negative valuation which I don't believe can be based on what it is measuring.

I think I saw someone from Darwinex (apologies if I am wrong) arguing that scoring more pips on a trade has to be positive however that is ignoring all the lost pips on failed trades that were avoided by waiting for a confirmed signal - something that is impossible for Darwinex to measure as they do not know what trades I avoided - but is something that I have measured for well over a year - my profit is higher if I wait for confirmation rather than get in earlier.

I wonder what anyone else thinks and could I be right that there is a flaw in the current scoring?

Hello, I think that the OPEN AND CLOSE STRATEGY (timing) arent accurate, because not all traders use a "U TURN" strategy, some of us wait for a more strong signal that the market is going to keep in a certain direction and stil I've seen some darwins that are very profitable and have good notes but arent high ranked because of this two criteria, and there are some darwins with "awesome timing" but horrible risk management, consistency and performance.

I believe that what investors want is a DARWIN with good experience, good risk management, good performance, I dont think they care a lot when does the trader enters the market as long as the DARWIN is profitable an consistent.

Timing talks about the past, and shows you what you could have done better, but it doesnt tell you anything useful because markets never make the same movements, so sure maybe I can enter the market early and exit later, but if my trading system waits for a stronger confirmation and its working, I dont think that should be penalized.

So I ask you please to reconsider taking the TIMING note out of the criteria because that is not a good statistic to measure how good a strategy is.

Hi Ignacio, I think that Timing is useful for personal insight, but its doesn't give useful information about how good a strategy is, several traders can have an awesome timing and not so profitable, and some other traders with "bad timing" have excellent notes and great performance. Timing is just great for certain type of systems, but not for every system.

When I think of timing as a note applied to a strategy, I see it as a Variable instead of a Constant, so it is an unreliable measure to determine the darwin success. The reason I think of it as a variable is because when the darwin analytics tell you that your timing sucks and you could do better if you place your trades earlier or exit the markets later, even if your system doesn't give you the signal you're waiting for to place your order, that implies changing a system that is profitable, with good risk management, experience and consistency, just to try to catch up the trend early and earn some more pips.

Also the timing strategy reflects jus what could had happened, but at real time no one can predict when the market is going up or down. So you cannot tell the traders that they could've done better because the market doesn't always move the same.

So to wrap this up, I think D-score should evaluate the CONSTANTS (experience, risk management, performance, consistency) and leave out the VARIABLES (timing) because that not reflects how good a system really is.

Hello Ignacio and every one in here, there's a tell in spanish that says "El hubiera no existe" The timing factor does precisely that, it tells "what could have been" but the fact is that trading is in real time and no one can know for sure where does the perfect entry is going to be. Its better to wait for confirmation even you lose some pips because of a "late entry" instead of trying to predict the price movement before it happens. Although you cant base a system on timing because the price doesn't always make the exact same moves.

Im still on a learning curve, but I've noticed that my former d-score was 43 and now that the platform has changed it dropped o 23 and Im not sure why this happened. Still I think that timing should not apply for darwinia (d-score)

could not agree more. let me offer yet another example, and an extreme one at that: the case of Jim Rogers: every time he is on TV and after the interviewer asks him when would be good time to buy or sell some instrument, he always starts by saying they should not ask him because, in his own words, he is the worst market timer ever. and that's coming from a legend, the guy who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros, and we all know their score, 4,000+% in profits! so i wonder how this timing algo would have ranked Rogers or Soros.

Systems with good Os/Cs don't have the time machine. It is just a matter of probabiliy with stops wider than targets, that are needed for contrarian and retracement setups.This is the reason why such systems now are penalyzed by a low Loss Aversion score.

I have just noticed that one of the rising stars of Reloaded is THA .This Darwin has 4.4 Os and 2.6 Cs , so old timing was 3.5With the old system I never noticed it and certainly had a score around 60 and a level of talented.So even if there is no improvement in the logic of timing, good darwins are not hidden by that anymore.36% winrate, RR >2 are typical of momentum setups.

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